


A Giver

by quillandsaber



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Past Sexual Abuse, experiencing triggers, love is not an instant panacea, male abuse survivor, past abusive relationship, post-abuse coping behaviors, still mostly fluffy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 07:56:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14972600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quillandsaber/pseuds/quillandsaber
Summary: "She was a taker, you need a giver."(WARNING: story contains VAGUE references to past verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse.)





	1. March

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This story involves a character who experienced intimate partner violence including sexual abuse as a teenager with a similar-aged partner over a decade prior to the events of the story and has received no professional help for the trauma at any point. The abuse is not described in any level of detail (hence why I didn't use the Rape/Non-Con archive warning), and the character is in a supportive environment, but they do encounter some triggers and react to them realistically. Please take these warnings and the above tags seriously.

Tina had always been a light sleeper, so when she woke in the middle of the night to a crash, she was bursting out of her bedroom, wand in hand, in seconds.  First priority was to check Newt's room; the door was open, his bed empty but slept in.  _ No, no, no, he can't be gone _ .  She ran down the narrow staircase to check the ground floor, instantly noting that there was a light on in the kitchen.  Bare feet slid over the oak floorboards as she rushed to see what the matter was.

Thank the fates, it was just Newt, staring in shock at ceramic fragments on the tile floor she surmised must be from their teapot.  No blood or bodies anywhere, no dark wizards invading their cottage, nothing like she'd feared. Only a harmless broken teapot and a startled magizoologist in his pajamas.  Tina let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.

"Mercy Lewis, Newt... _ Reparo, Tergeo _ ."  The teapot knit itself back together to sit innocently on the kitchen counter, and the spilled liquid vanished from the floor.

Newt looked up at her like he'd gotten caught misbehaving.  "So sorry, did I wake you?" he swallowed.

"I'd not be much good at keeping you safe if I can't protect you from broken china," she said with a good-humored huff.  "Don't worry about it. Were you making tea?"

"Attempting to," he muttered, shrinking back in on himself in a way that instantly made Tina worry.  "Hand must have slipped, and I'd left my wand in my room."

"Hey," she stepped into the kitchen so she unblocked the door.  "Go sit on the sofa. I can make us some cocoa, if you like?"

Newt blinked, nodded, then bustled out of the tiny kitchen to leave Tina to dig through the icebox for milk.

By the time Tina had put together two cups of cocoa and walked into the living room of their cottage, Newt had evidently gone back upstairs to retrieve his wand.  The old stone fireplace was blazing cheerily, casting friendly shadows across the familiar room and chasing away the late March chill.

"Here you go," she handed him his cocoa and curled up at the other side of the sofa, cradling her own mug in her hands.  She watched carefully as he took a big gulp of the chocolatey liquid "Feeling any better?"

"Much, thank you."  He clasped the mug tightly, his elbows resting on his knees.  "I seem to always get nightmares this time of the year."

"From the War?"  Newt had never told her what he'd gone through in the teens other than to tell her he was bound by the Official Secrets Act, but she knew that men who'd been in the trenches often found they couldn't sleep the night through without remembering what they'd been through.

"No, from my school years."  He huffed gently and smiled without humor, eyes fixed on his cocoa cup.  "You're too good to me, you know. Here I go waking you up in the middle of the night because I'm too much of an idiot to make a pot of tea without breaking it, and you fix everything and make me cocoa."

"It's just cocoa, Newt, and it's just a teapot.  No real harm done." But alarm bells were going off in the back of her head, and she scooted a little forward along the couch cushions.  "It's okay if you don't want to talk about it, but can you tell me what happened, back at school?"

A barrage of emotions passed over Newt's face, obviously debating with himself before he answered.

"Leta.  Leta happened.  I was never…" he struggled to find the words, " _ enough _ , you see.  She wanted more than I could give, but she took it all the same.  And like a fool I still loved her years."

_ Loved _ .  Not  _ love _ .  Tina squashed the flutter of hope in her chest; her own feelings had nothing to do with the fact that Newt was still haunted by the ghost of an adolescent sweetheart enough to have nightmares more than ten years later.  "You aren't a fool for having loved someone, Newt. It's not something you can help." Didn't she know it.

"And you question why I say you're too good to me?"  His wry smile had a touch of real humor, albeit self-deprecating, which eased the worst of her worry.

They sat and drank their cocoa in companionable silence, time only marked by the fading of the firelight as the logs turned to ash.  At some point, the cold from outside started to creep back in and bite at Tina's bare toes, triggering a shudder she couldn't quite suppress.

"You're shivering," Newt observed quietly.  "I'll be fine on my own, promise. You can go back to bed."

Tina's protective instincts warred with her desire for her warm blankets up in her bedroom.  "I'll go upstairs if you do," she proposed. "You need sleep too."

"All right," he conceded, picking up his wand to direct the now-empty cocoa cups into the kitchen as Tina set the tip of hers alight to guide them up the dark staircase to the second-floor landing that their bedrooms both adjoined.  They stood their a minute, neither quite willing to return to their room just yet.

"Tina, I…" his gaze drifted towards his open bedroom door as he licked his lips nervously.

"I won't harp on you if you go down to the kitchen again for tea later," Tina promised.  "Just try to sleep some first? The cocoa might work its magic."

"Yes, of course."  He smiled gently to himself.  "Good night, Tina."

He passed by her as he went into his room, but not before Tina felt a feather-light pressure brush against her forehead.  By the time she realized what it must have been, the door to his room was already firmly closed behind him.

When Tina finally fell asleep again in the warm cocoon of her bed, it was with warm butterflies in her stomach and a smile on her face.


	2. May

They danced around each other at Nobody Farm.

Newt spent his days bouncing between his workroom in the cottage and the barn where his slowly-growing flock of Swooping Evils had set up their nests, stopping only to eat and sleep.  Tina made rounds around the farmyard twice a day to reinforce the wards and anti-No-Maj charms--it was the entire reason she was here in England, after all, making sure Newt and his work with the Swooping Evil venom stayed secret from the outside world--and spent most of the rest of her time reading, working on the cottage garden (she was still fascinated by the fact that she could  _ grow things _ , now that she was in the country) and occasionally going down to the nearby village to do the weekly shop under the alias of Mrs. Johnson, wife of Mr. Peter Johnson, eccentric and hermitical professor of comparative anatomy who everyone thought they should probably invite over for supper but mysteriously kept forgetting to do so.  Their circles of activity met at mealtimes and some evenings when Newt was too frustrated with his experiments to spend more time in his workroom, but otherwise their existences were separate, and the topic of Leta lay dormant for weeks until it decided to rise again.

Like everything important that happened between them, it came as a stark interruption to their routine.  This time, it was at breakfast as they sit down to eggs, bread, sausage, and kippers, still in their pajamas and dressing gowns with sleep-mussed hair.

"Did you ever have a sweetheart?" he asked abruptly.

Tina's fork had been halfway to her mouth, but she stopped and let it return to her plate.  "I did, back in my training days," she replied carefully; she'd been anticipating the question for a good month.  "Allen was a good man, but he was hired for the West Coast office right out of Auror Academy, and they wanted me to stay in New York, so we parted ways.  He and his wife are expecting their second child soon."

Newt look down at his eggs.  "I'm sorry, I oughtn't have asked."

"No need to apologize; it was for the best.  I wasn't sure at the time if I wanted to settle down and leave Queenie when she'd just gotten out of school, and the fact Allen and I had to work on opposite sides of the country meant that I didn't have to figure it out yet."  They sat in silence staring down at their breakfasts until Tina couldn't stand it anymore. "I  _ am _ a bit curious why you asked, though."

"It's just...well…" he rolled his sausage around his plate with his fork as he chose his words, "it occurred to me that while you know about...about  _ her _ , I'd never asked if you'd left someone behind when the Ministry hired you to come here and be my minder.  And that I shouldn't have assumed there wasn't someone--in a gentleman sense," he mumbled the clarification as his ears turned red.

"Newt, the closest thing I've had to a date since '22 was the time you drove me and the dray into the village so we could pick up the new kitchen table, unless you count when we went to the Blind Pig with Queenie and Jacob as a double date."  It wasn't something she particularly liked owning up to, but she needed to make sure Newt  _ understood _ .  "There hasn't been anyone at all between you and Allen."

His fork fidgeting stilled.  "I wasn't aware you counted those times."

Now was the time for courage.  "I count pretty much everything that involves you."

"Fair enough...I suppose the cover story should be built with some truth at the core."

Tina took a deep breath to quiet the urge to be annoyed at how easily he was pushing the obvious truth aside.  "Newt, have you considered that I could be here because I  _ like _ you?  It's an easy job for good pay, yes, but I wouldn't have taken it if it wasn't you."

"It...well, I had hoped."  He seemed to debate stabbing his sausage before he set down his fork with finality.  "Tina, I'm sorry, I'm an absolute nervous wreck when it comes to these things. I somehow can't see why you'd choose this life, choose m--," he stopped himself abruptly, "when you had so much better available to you."

"And  _ I _ think I've got the best of the lot, even if he does think he's a nervous wreck at times," Tina insisted.  "For goodness' sake, Newt,  _ please _ believe me."  She reached for his hand that rested near the fork, intending to reassure him, when something completely unexpected happened:

He snatched his hand away from the table as if it were a hot stove.

They stared at each other in shock for a heart-pounding moment, then a look of horror came over his features.  "Merlin, I--Tina, I am  _ so  _ sorry.  I didn't mean to do that, I swear," he stammered.

As she looked at the deeply-distressed man across the table from her, the truth dawned on her.  She'd seen that look in her work, she knew what that look meant, and the reality of the situation made her stomach turn.  How could she have underestimated this?

"Newt," she said cautiously, drawing her hands into her lap as she tried to remain as calm as she could, "I'm not upset with you, far from it.  But...can you tell me if you had the reflex before Leta?"

He swallowed before he spoke.  "You've figured it out, then." His voice cracked.

"Some of it.  But I still stand by what I said earlier," Tina added firmly, squaring her jaw.  "I've got the best of the lot, and nothing will change my mind."

"Yet what kind of man does it make me if I can't take your  _ hand _ without flinching away?" he muttered bitterly before drawing back into himself and pushing away from the breakfast table.  "I'm sorry, pay me no mind. I've got a cauldron on the boil I need to check on." Within seconds he was gone, and seconds after that Tina heard the  _ thunk _ of the workroom door being bolted shut.

The morning passed.  Tina began her daily routine--cleaned up the breakfast dishes, dressed, checked the house wards--but Newt didn't stir from behind the locked door.  By the time it became clear he wasn't coming to lunch, Tina put together a pair of sandwiches and left them on a plate outside the door; they sat there, neglected, all day.  After her fruitless attempt to lure him out of the workroom, the afternoon dragged on interminably. She did the rest of the digging in the garden that she could do before her seedlings arrived, she finished her Muggle mystery novel, she triple-checked the wards.  Dinnertime eventually crawled in without any further indication of activity from Newt.

As the sun set, Tina made up her mind.  With determination burning in her chest, she sent two large potatoes zooming through the air into the oven and ignited the firebox, plunked down a saucepan to heat some of those infernal British canned beans that Newt was fond of, and started a large hunk of cheddar on the grater.  An hour later, she had assembled two piping hot baked potatoes (his with those  _ awful _ beans, hers without, thank you very much) and made her way carefully, beaned potato in hand, towards the workroom.

She knocked, careful to keep it quiet but firm.

"Newt, I've got your dinner.  Can I come in?"

No answer.

"At the risk of sounding like my sister, you  _ need  _ to eat something; you skipped lunch and ate almost nothing for breakfast.  You'll feel like you got trampled by your Erumpent if you don't."

Dead silence.

"Newt, if I don't hear anything from you in the next ten seconds I've got to assume that you've had a disastrous potion accident and you need help."

Finally, the groan of a chair being pushed back and some hesitant steps towards the door.  The squeal of the bolt being pulled back, the grinding of the old doorknob's tumbler as it turned.  After what was certainly more than ten seconds, the door creaked open to reveal a harried-looking Newt, still in his dressing gown, who immediately shied back away towards his worktable against the opposite wall.

"So sorry, must have lost track of time, been very busy with this potion," he mumbled as he fiddled with the burner flame under a bubbling cauldron.  "I've got to keep an eye on it very carefully, or it's likely to turn unexpectedly--"

She put down the plate on the side table, took a deep breath, and turned towards him.

"Newt, I want to ask you something, but I want you to know first that it's perfectly all right if you say no."

He looked up from the bubbling pot and blinked at her warily.  "What?"

Tina took a step forward, steeling her nerves (she needed to be the brave one now, for both of them, just like when she and Queenie had been children) as she held out her left hand, palm up.  "Can you try to put your hand on mine? I won't move it unless you ask me to, or pull you or push you or grab you or anything like that. You have my word."

He stared at her, cauldron utterly forgotten.  "You...want me to touch your hand."

" _ If _ you want to," Tina clarified.  "If you don't, just tell me, and I'll leave you be.  Promise."

"It's not that I don't want to."  He protested quickly. "It's that...it's that...Merlin's beard, I don't know what."  Newt ran his hand through his rumpled hair. "Here I am, afraid that I can't hold another person's  _ hand  _ properly."

"For what it's worth, it's not ridiculous that it's hard, what with what you've been through," Tina offered, staying as still as she could manage.  "But I think you'll be better at it than you think, if you want to. And if you can't, or don't want to, that's all right too. Say the word and I'll let you have your dinner in peace, no feelings hurt."

He nodded and swallowed, shoulders tensing as he stared at her outstretched hand.  Tina fought the urge to fidget in the silence. Still, she had to stay still. He was debating with himself, she could tell, elbows twitching and fingers flexing.  Once, twice his hand jerked upwards, only to pull back. At last, she opened her mouth to tell him that it was okay, he didn't have to force himself, when both of his hands shot forward, encasing her hand in his two larger ones with a firm grip.

Tina froze herself in place, willing herself to keep as still as stone as if the slightest movement might spook him (and she knew, from experience, that it very well could).  The moment felt frozen in time. No sound, no motion. Just stillness. After what felt like an age, the iron grip around her hand started to loosen, one hand falling, until his right hand alone rested gently atop hers, and she had a chance to study it.

His palm was dry and calloused, the fingers much the same as they began to wrap around the edge of her hand.  He had freckles on his hands too, she realized, interrupting the spaces between scars. It was a beautiful hand, a worn worker's hand that you seldom saw on wizards who only ever picked up a wand.

"See, Newt?"  She looked up to his eyes.  "You  _ can _ do it.  We've just got to be patient and figure out the how and the when."

Newt huffed, but his fingers squeezed gently around her palm, almost out of instinct.  "I'm afraid you're going to have to be  _ very _ patient with me."

"I understand that.  You are  _ absolutely _ worth it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle readers, you have a choice to make. These two chapters are part of a planned 5+1 fic that's been on the back burner a while. If I continue it, there will be a LITTLE more necessary detail about the abuse Newt dealt with in his teen years in the following chapters (the tags will update accordingly), and there will be some sexual content, but it'll be a while before it gets "juicy". I do promise a happy ending in every sense of the word, though! Please let me know in the comments if this is something you'd like to see.


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